


like forests after fire

by sunshineandguns



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F, Fluff, season five, with just a tiny hint of angst I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 14:28:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30124227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineandguns/pseuds/sunshineandguns
Summary: She thinks of all the things that she herself has taught Gabrielle, taught those hands to do, and the fact that a few scars aside, they’re the exact same hands, just lither, a little less pristine, a lot more skilled.Or, hormonal, tired Xena has a lot of feelings.
Relationships: Gabrielle/Xena
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	like forests after fire

**Author's Note:**

> Only my second dip into this fandom and I have to admit to being somewhat fixated on season 5, and all the stuff that doesn’t get said... I hope this is coherent and someone somewhere gets some enjoyment out of it. Please do let me know in the comments.

_Hands, your hands, quite calm now  
At the day’s end,   
You are not delicately molded, not exquisite,   
Not gentle always…. _

_You are scarred,  
With broken lines—   
Sultry lines of passion.   
There are grotesques in you,   
Like forests after fire. _

_\- Florence Ripley Mastin_

-

In the faint amber light of the dwindling camp fire, Xena watches Gabrielle stitch carefully through the braided leather. She’s wrapped in one of the furs they sleep on, and her face is ever so slightly pinched in concentration, and for a moment Xena is overwhelmed by the sight of her doing this action which she must have watched a hundred times before (sometimes with cloth, and other times with skin pulled taught by the same silvery needle).

When they first met, Xena had considered the small, slightly chubby hands of her new companion, unblemished besides the kind of wear you’d expect of a farmgirl. She had watched Gabrielle clumsily grip a small dagger, and then a staff, helped guide her hands into the right positions, and watched, appreciatively, as the weapon became an extension of the bard’s limbs, over time. She had watched Gabrielle scribble on scrolls, from a careful distance of course, and seen those same fingers hold tightly to Argo’s reigns.

Now, she considers all the things those hands have learnt over the years. It’s the hormones, she decides, when a sudden moisture gathers in the corners of her eyes, ready to be blinked hastily away before Gabrielle can look up from what she’s doing. The damn pregnancy hormones which have her wistfully remembering moments in time, spread out before her like the pages of a map, a clear pathway for her to follow. Gabrielle, unable to do much more than hit herself with her staff. Gabrielle, almost in tears as she carefully, slowly, stitched and cleaned a gash the size of her own hand. Those same fingers clinging to Xena, and brushing through Xena’s hair, and twisting inside of her. She thinks of all the things that she herself has taught Gabrielle, taught those hands to do, and the fact that a few scars aside, they’re the exact same hands, just lither, a little less pristine, a lot more skilled.

She had taught Gabrielle to braid, some time in that first week of them getting to know one another, where their nights were spent alternating between awkward silences, and Gabrielle asking questions that Xena couldn’t quite drum up the answers to. It feels like a thousand years ago, Xena sat between Gabrielle’s legs, those stubby little fingers gently pulling at her hair, slowly doing as Xena instructed. It had been so incredibly domestic and childlike at the time that for a second she had become overwhelmed by the feeling of it. Only a moment, and then she’d blinked it away.

“It will come in handy with tethering Argo, and should we ever sail together,” she had justified, mostly to herself, when actually the feeling of someone else’s fingers gently moving through her hair had taken her right back to sitting on her mother’s lap as a small child, and she couldn’t quite stop herself from enjoying it.

“What are you thinking about?” Her thoughts are interrupted by Gabrielle - the Gabrielle who is here now, with fingernails stained from the rabbit she skinned for dinner, and her sais in her lap, ready to be sharpened - yet another skill Xena has bestowed on her.

Xena clears her throat, pushing herself to her feet with less grace than she would prefer, and making her way across the small distance to Gabrielle’s side. Wordlessly, she begins to help her back into her newly repaired top, letting her hands linger at the bare skin of Gabrielle’s shoulders for just a beat longer than she needs to. The muscle there is both familiar and not, her mind still distracted by the past.

(They haven’t been intimate in so long and she misses her so so much but she doesn’t have the energy to do anything about it).

She rubs her fingers across Gabrielle’s collarbones, instead, digs the heels of her hands into her shoulder blades, just the way she knows Gabrielle likes, and for a moment, all of the unsaid stuff between them doesn’t exist. For a moment this could be just about any moment of time. Except it does, and it isn’t.

“You’re not going to distract me into forgetting that you haven’t answered,” Gabrielle tells her, though she does lean contentedly into the touch, rolling her shoulders into Xena’s palms. “Besides, shouldn’t I be doing this for you, not the other way around?”

They’ve skirted around Xena’s pregnancy so much that it’s become something of a game. Once the initial shock had worn off, and Gabrielle had truly accepted that there wasn’t some one night stand to blame for her condition, the subject had sort of drifted away from them. She knows Gabrielle is worried - probably for a myriad of reasons - but it’s sort of just lingering there, just outside of their reach. They’ve barely been able to discuss what happened in Rome, and now there’s this, and it’s reasonable that they don’t quite know where to start. Still, it is a conversation they need to have, eventually.

“Don’t you miss writing?” Xena says, eventually, because it isn’t what she was thinking about, but it also kind of is, and it’s a safer topic than the long list of ways in which Gabrielle is no longer quite Gabrielle anymore.

She’s clearly taken aback by the question, twisting to look at Xena directly, her eyes slightly squinted with suspicion.

“I do,” she allows, slowly, “but.... I’m needed in other ways, now.”

And Xena softens at that, at the memory of the girl who desperately wanted to be taught to fight, and then, later, that same woman throwing aside her weapon, throwing aside a life of violence, only to be forced back into it in a futile attempt to save Xena’s life. Every time Gabrielle had gone down this path, it had, ultimately, been because of her. She worries, now, about how desensitised to the violence her love has become, about how easily she’s taken on this role now. First to protect a helpless Xena, and now to protect both her and her unborn child. _Their_ unborn child.

Gabrielle is almost unrecognisable from that farm girl who had originally run away with her. And she loves her, just as fiercely if not more so now, but she does so long for the parts of her that seem to have faded after being broken one too many times.

She misses the parts of her that predate their time together, the parts that Xena isn’t responsible for.

Absently, her fingers work their way through Gabrielle’s short blonde hair, scratching lightly at her scalp, and then, as if they have a mind of their own, gently tugging strands into the beginnings of a braid. Her hair’s too short now, of course, and the pattern falls apart, until she lets go entirely, smoothing out the golden strands.

“Sit down,” Gabrielle says, softly, and Xena finds herself doing as she’s told. Gabrielle has that affect on her.

Tanned, nimble fingers find their ways into all the right places along Xena’s shoulders, and down, into her spine. This is something Xena taught her, too, but all the studying in the world wouldn’t relay the tenderness of Gabrielle’s touch, the love that seems to ooze from her fingertips as she makes her way into all the places Xena needs her most.

She thinks, again, of those hands undressing her, of the last time they were intimate. Gabrielle’s fingers running along the invisible scar along her lower spine, their palms pressed together with only the faintest memory of the wounds they had both felt there. Their fingers of one hand tangled, the others deeply hidden in one another, whilst they both desperately sought pleasure after all the pain they’d been through together.

Gabrielle’s hands linger for one last moment along her spine, before she drops to a seated position next to Xena, and again picks up her sais. For a while, they sit there in near-silence, with just the sound of the whetstone against metal, familiar and steady enough that Xena feels her eyelids start to droop.

“Oh no you don’t,” Gabrielle murmurs, her voice gentle with fondness. Her hand skims down Xena’s arm, cradling her elbow as she helps Xena up from the rock, and guides her across to where their bedrolls are already laid out. When had she done that? The gesture brings forth the shadow of a memory, Gabrielle, young and unused to travelling so far, falling asleep in the saddle, pressed against Xena’s back. In those early days, it wasn’t unusual for them to stop early, for Xena to have to heave the young bard down from Argo’s back and onto a hastily set bed roll.

She’s so not used to being on the other end of the deal.

“Gabrielle,” she whispers, gazing up at her.

“I’m here,” Gabrielle soothes, lowering Xena against the furs and pulling a blanket around her, smoothing it out with her palm. Before she can move away, Xena catches her hand, tangles their fingers together.

“C’m’ere.”

Gabrielle allows herself to be tugged down beside her, her body slotting in next to Xena’s like two pieces of broken pottery, raw edges perfectly matched, even if Xena’s body is changing daily. Settling in behind her, Gabrielle ghosts her lips against the shell of Xena’s ear, her forearm resting carefully along the length of her hip bone, cradling her just bellow the growing swell of her belly. She senses the hesitation in Gabrielle’s feather-light touch. Even through the thick fabric of her tunic, Gabrielle is almost achingly gentle with her.

There it is again, this unspoken thing between them. Xena doesn’t turn to look at her, but somehow can sense what Gabrielle is thinking about, can picture that little frown between her eyebrows, her mind working through painful memories she doesn’t want to talk about. Doesn’t want to worry Xena with.

Some day, they will talk about this, Xena thinks. It won’t be tonight.

Instead, she draws Gabrielle’s hand up to her lips, kisses the pads of her fingers, and finally gives in to Morpheus’ sweet beckoning, falling asleep with Gabrielle’s hand still pressed against her face.


End file.
